


Cypress End: Prologue

by MossGreen_of_Teeth



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:33:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26326435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MossGreen_of_Teeth/pseuds/MossGreen_of_Teeth
Summary: You are invited to Cypress End. Welcome! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring. At your own risk.





	Cypress End: Prologue

Sixty percent.  
Sixty percent of the human population was touched by the CBD2. People now believe it originated from an archeological dig in a scorched riverbed, the river had been damed literally and physically ten years prior and crippling erosion followed in its wake ever since, exposing the unexpected remains of lost architecture. A feed of vultures watched on in silence when the first scientists arrived, diggers beside them, to unearth this newfound treasure. The vultures had been nesting nearby for centuries. Longer than anyone remembered, probably because they remembered what happened the first time, to those first humans, all those eons ago.  
It took months of backbreaking work in sweltering heat for them to finally remove the river’s dried skin from the circular room. It took several more weeks for them to find the bodies, and another year for them to move the bodies to a lab to be studied. Many scientists were still cataloging and digging when the first scans of the mummies began. They were emaciated, dried blood still clinging to their eyes, ears, and lips. Each corpse had their wrists and ankles broken, were bound in a crouching position and stored inside wooden barrels. The barrels were then filled with honey and then buried. Ritual sacrifice was what they first suspected and this was what was told to a fascinated public, these horrors bringing wonder to wide eyed elementary school students on their field trip to the local museum. But soon after, when it was decided that X-rays weren’t enough, the bodies were opened and the desecrated organs revealed the symptoms of terrible disease.  
The captivated scientific community could only delve on, determined to learn the true fates of these poor distant relatives. Three days after the first autopsy the younger lab assistant came down with a terrible cough, complaining of a headache, fever, chills and a strange needling sensation of the skin. He was checked into a hospital. Two days after, he was dead and every nurse, doctor and family member who had come into contact with him was now sick. Ten years passed, and the world fell. No fire can stop a plague. No strength can halt it. Sixty percent of the human population was taken by CBD2.  
If the horror of pestilence symptoms videos and photographs weren’t enough for the media, the stories of entire groups of people disappearing and dropping dead at work or driving filled them in. Panicked people fled to distant places, bringing the deadly disease with them, creating ghost town upon ghost town. In America, there was a rash of religious excitement where people were murdered or engaged in group suicide. The baffled and overwhelmed police sometimes reported finding lost individuals wandering alone through black-out sites, the last soul still alive for miles. One case involved a woman running from wolves that she said to have been picking apart the corpses of family members when she stumbled upon them. The officer who found her had to fire 4 rounds at them to get them to back off.  
This was the world now, and this town, like all the other towns of the world, stood half empty. There were too many once loved houses facing the streets, gas stations waiting for the ghosts of cars, and several storefronts had been boarded up so long that the wooden boards over the windows were warped. It gave the buildings a mean look, as if each one were glaring out at the world.  
Today it was raining heavily upon the angry architecture, hitting the burning asphalt and hissing as it curled up into steam. Rain ran down the Spanish moss, shook oak trees, and pooled in the uneven cement of the sidewalk. No one had seen the sun in several days and so they were in an even more sour mood then usual when they saw strangers. Even in a small place like this one, it seemed as if most people were strangers. Nobody liked to stay still these days, preferring to let the sleeping houses die. Most lived detached from a world they didn’t want to touch and those who stayed; the corner market’s old owner Markus, the creepy speechless man who owned the very last gas station and the tired owner of the only decent diner for miles around; they stayed to feed those passers by. The rare locals as invisible to outsiders as the cracks in the sidewalk.  
This place was once called: Cypress End  
But people didn’t know the name anymore.  
Cypress End had begun long ago as a fur trading post back in the 1700’s and perhaps earlier then that if you were one to believe the paint stripped welcome sign in front of the city hall. It had grown up alongside a cold mountain lake and had been built, abandoned and rebuilt upon its own bones at least three times. The soil was not good for farming and it struggled when the railroads were built just outside of convenient and then boomed to its greatest heights when the highways sprung up around them, Cypress End had the good fortune of being the spider at the center of many a roads end. When those three large interstates met, large black-glass buildings sprung up, already stocked full with men in dark suits. A white hospital with ornamental arching windows to impress the tourists followed suit, and was thusly followed by a large laboratory that had grown a huge gate around it like a terrible weed. It was ugly enough to be easily ignored.  
The sections of Cyprus end that didn’t look like the set of a zombie movie, could be described as “shabby southern beach style”. Determined to sell t-shirts and junk food to the strangers, as if they wanted to drive down to Cold lake and have a faux beach vacation or a fishing trip on a quaint little boat. Most of the storefronts were determinedly painted white to distinguish themselves from the thick rotting greenery that infested the hollowed sections between each other. They said, “we are still alive here” to the eyes of tired drivers.  
There were a few noteworthy exceptions to this besides the office building and they were these: Three large and intimidating churches who all seemed to be in constant battle with one another to have the most gaudy and extravagant features; The art gallery called, “Cicada” which was painted with colors stolen from Cinco de Mayo and covered in Christmas lights all year round; “Selene’s” the diner in town worth struggling to get too which was a small brick building held together by pure force of will; “The Flaming Cobweb” which was a museum of oddities who’s focus was on inaccurate scientific illustrations and statues of prehistoric life but who also featured a carrousel, a small eclectic bar and a dance floor in the basement among other things; A place known to all who saw it as “the bad motel” which had no name was, of course, the only motel, and seemed the perfect place to meet a real life serial killer or be abducted by aliens; the “Oddfellow” bookstore whose names origin was unknown and was haunted by a very lethargic ghost; the police station which was half a victorian brick house and half concrete seemed always to be hiding something; and of course the drab apartment buildings along with some scattered individual houses.  
There was also a large park which was owned by one of the churches and was about 75% southern style jungle. Out on the edge of this jungle was a life sized wooden horse. It had three legs, two in the back and one in the front—but not as if it had lost one; oh no; the leg was directly in the middle, with neither a right nor left hoof. As if the artist forgot God didn’t model animals off tricycles. Nobody remembered where it had come from or how it had gotten there. The other 25% of the land consisted of; a playground, an ancient decaying cemetery and a well groomed park where everyone with a dog liked to wander about spreading gossip or ignoring each other as hard as they could with headphones on.

And this was where Drake was sleeping, alone and exposed, with his jacket draped over the back of the bench and over his face to keep some of the hot rain off his face. A police car drove by, slowing to stare at this figure sprawled out in the rain, but he didn’t stop and eventually moved on. It was difficult to see through the foggy car window, but Drake had been there for hours, lake-smelling rain soaked through the fabric and through his hair. If it hadn’t been such a hot day, the cold alone would have woken him, but he was dreaming and the warm water wasn’t enough to bring him back, not yet.


End file.
